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30 September 2015

If you remember these characters then you'll probably remember the theme song that goes with them! I've had it stuck in my head for days now. This is an oldie but a goodie. Rosie and Jim first aired in 1990 but it ended in 2000. They were 2 ragdolls living on a boat exploring the world from the canal they traveled on.

For Rosie I used Illamasqua Monogamous as my base. Her hair, eyes and mouth were done with Orly Liquid Vinyl. Her cheeks, nose and mouth line are done with Sally Hansen Miracle Gel in Creme de la Creme. Finally her little bow is Sally Hansen patent Gloss in 730 Moto.

Jim is pretty much the same but in a different order. His face is Essence Iced Latte. Eyes, mouth and frekcles are done with Orly Liquid Vinyl. His cheeks and mouth line are Sally Hansen Miracle gel in Creme de la Creme, Finally his hair is Sally Hansen Miracle Gel in 300 Electra-cute.

I didn't want my pinky and index to be plain so I did some polka dots based on the colour of Rosie's shirt (on the left) and Jim's cravat (on the right). I used Sally Hansen Patent Gloss in Moto for the red and OPI I just can't cope-acabana for the yellow.

29 September 2015

Vampy nails were called for in this weeks Twinsie Tuesday challenge. I didn't want to do the usual black and red so I went with purple and red instead. It's still pretty vampy though!

For my base I went with 2 coats of Essence Amazed by you from the gel nail polish line. On top of that I added on a polish I haven't used in quite a while, Nails inc Victoria. I just freehanded it as it would have taken too long to get the striping tape level and it always peels or leaves a a bit of tape on my nails making it look messy.

Nails inc isn't a brand I would pay full price for. They chip really badly on me and I honestly don't think many brands are worth a €15+ price tag. Their colours are quite bland so you can easily find a cheaper dupe with a more long lasting finish. I don't mind picking them up when they come free with a magazine though!

26 September 2015

I think I did a blog inspired post before I changed my header a few months back. Purple_rain suggested I do an updated version a while ago so here it is! It was hard to fit all of the information on my little nails but I think it turned out ok in the end,

My base on my index and pinky is Sally Hansen Complete salon manicure 375 SGT Preppy. I used Sally hansen Miracle gel 430 Creme de la Creme on my middle and ring fingers. The black is Orly Liquid Vinyl. The purple is Essence the gel nail polish 52 Amazed by You. It needed another layer for the writing to be 100% opaque but honestly you wouldn't notice in person so I didn't bother. Finally I added on my blog name with Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure 547 Peach of Cake.

The writing on my index and pinky finger ended up being too big so I had to do them vertically! It still bears a resemblance to my logo so I'm counting this as a success.

24 September 2015

Finally some darker nails! I had to cut my nails down after breaking one of them but honestly I'm pretty happy with the shape at the moment. It's making things a lot easier to do. I haven't been into painting my nails lately so I didn't really want to do much with this manicure.

I went with Sally Hansen Complete Salon manicure 674 Nightwatch as my base. It's a super glossy navy with a great formula. I think it will stain though so start with a basecoat I left my ring finger bare and put on a coat of white instead. Initially I planned on putting glitter on all my nails but I ended up just putting it on the white base and I like it. It's subtle but still it has that little sparkle to it. The glitter I used was Essie Stroke of Brilliant. I love this glitter. It's a lovely blue shade and it goes with so many polishes. I only needed one coat and it covered the nail perfectly. The glitter really doesn't show up as nicely in photo's but it is lovely in real life.

22 September 2015

This week we were inspired by our hobbies. I honestly only started really having a hobbies in the ast couple of years. I had a few ideas for this post but in the end I went with my most recent addition to my hobby list is planning! I am a huge fan of organizing things but I never heard of the planning community until recently. It's definitely an American thing for the most part but I like it a lot. I'm a functional planner so I don't decorate my planner with themes and such (if you have no idea what I'm talking about go on youtube and watch a "plan with me")

I bought my own planner from Personal-Planner as I couldn't find on I liked and I'm not willing to pay $50 plus $50 (around 88 euro not including the customs charge) shipping to Ireland to get one of the "popular" ones. Plus I noticed on all of the youtube videos I watched the people using the expensive ones end up customizing each page with stickers. So why spend an obscene amount of money on something you don't really like all that much? Baffles me.

For my mani I went with a page flag for my index using Models Own Hedonist and some striping tape. The middle was inspired by the pages in my planner. I have a purple heading with grey and white lined paper. The purple is Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure 640 Plum luck and the grey is OPI Skull and Glossbones. For my ring finger I kept it simple with a little pen and some writing. The pen is NYC Lexington Yellowand Skull and Glossbones. The writing is Orly Liquid Vinyl. You can't really see on my pinky but there is a grey stripe at the side to represent the little ruler that I keep in my planner.

19 September 2015

Part 2 of my Super Mario nails is Mario himself. It's pretty much the exact same design I did for my other hand (post here) but replacing Luigi with Mario on my middle finger. It was hard enough trying to replicate the design but it was worth the extra effort I think. Again I got a good 5-6 days of wear out of this manicure the extra time spent on it really wasn't that big of a deal.

The polishes I used were:

NYC High Line Green

NYC Blue Sky

Max Factor Red Passion

Orly Liquid Vinyl

Essence Love is in the Air

Barry m Starlight (LE Christmas holographic glitter)

Illamasqua Monogamous

Yoshi is my favourite, he is such a cute character and it wasn't too hard to recreate. I still have a good few characters to do from the Mario series but I like to redo Mario every once in a while just because I like the way he turns out.

17 September 2015

I thought I'd try a new "style" of manicure this week just to see how it worked out. I often see people doing a different design on each nail and sometimes I love it but other times it just seems odd to me. I like the idea of mixing it up and not having to recreate the exact design 10 times in a row. It's hard to get them all perfect and it always looks dodgy on my pinky nail anyway.

I started this manicure with 2 coats of Barry m Orchid (one of my favourite polishes from last year) I didn't want to go too wild with my colour choice in case I ended up hating it so I picked out Barry m Raspberry to go on top. I used striping tape on my index. dotting tools on my middle and I freehanded the pinky. I left my accent plan and just popped on Catrice Have an ice day (my favourite holographic topper) for a bit of sparkle instead. I was going to use Zoya Blaze but I thought that would cover the base too much and I didn't want too much raspberry taking over.

I actually like the way this turned out. I would say you'd want to pick your colours carefully though. If they don't go well in your eyes then you probably won't like the end result which would be a shame.

15 September 2015

This week we have a good few Twinsies joining the group including one of my best blogging friends Sharon! I am delighted to see so many new girls joining! All their links are down below if you want to check out their blogs and follow them.

For today's post we were inspired by our BFF's. I went with what might seem to be an odd choice but I'd honestly be lost without it. My Ipod is my most reliable mood lifter and I thought it would be a good choice for this prompt. I've relied on it for years now and I'd really miss not having one. It's a simple silver and black one but I don't care how it looks as long as it works well, can hold a heap of songs and has a decent battery life (which is does!)

Sally Hansen Complete Salon manicure 372 Greige is my base. I have on 2 coats. Then for the tips I freehanded Orly liquid vinyl on top, let it dry and then added on some more greige for a funky french. For my accent nail I used a white base. Again I freehanded the symbol using Essence the gel nail polish 40 Play with my mint and Essence I <3 Trends, The Nudes 07 Hope for Love.

11 September 2015

I love the Bath and Body work anti-bacterial hand gels and I use them all the time. There is nothing worse than feeling like your hands aren't clean so I keep a bottle around me at all times. Unfortunately you cannot get these in Ireland so we have to rely on friends and family or amazon/ebay to get a hold of some. The bottle I have on the go at the minute is in the scent Sweet pea. I thought the gel looked pretty in the bottle so I decided to do some nail art based on it!

I started off with 2 coats of Sally Hansen Miracle gel in 310 Shock Wave. This is a beautiful shade of pink. I've been obsessed with Pink Cadillaquer from the range but Shock Wave is coming in a close second. I think it's the more appropriate one for the Autumn time. Pink Cadillaquer is a lot brighter, more so a bubblegum pink.

Once that was dry I dotted on Illamasqua Monogamous and filled it in giving my nails a dripping effect. I then added on Essence Electriiiiiic using a small dotting tool. I topped it all off with a coat of Sally Hansen 3D Gel shine topcoat. I wanted it to look like the gel was dripping on my hands and I think it worked out pretty well! There are some bits that I would have added in if I thought of them in time but overall it was pretty successful :)

A quick shot of the gel in the bottle so you can see where I got my inspiration from! I don't have much of this bottle left so it was hard to get a clear shot of the little blue beads floating inside of the pink base.

10 September 2015

A quick little post today. I picked out one of my oldest nail polishes and decided to give it some use. Catrice Caught on the Red Carpet was one of the first polishes I bought and it's almost finished. Thankfully the formula is still good so I managed to get my manicure done without any hassle. Depending on how long my nails are this is a 2-3 coater but it dries quickly and it wears well. I've often gone 4-5 days with it on and not noticed any major wear.

I always wear a base with this polish and most reds do stain and leave your skin looking red and sore. It's a nightmare to get staining off so I take the safe option and wear a base. It has a decent gloss on its own but a topcoat will do wonders for wear time.

08 September 2015

I kept it pretty tame for this weeks Twinsie Tuesday post. We were given an "Ocean Inspired" prompt so I went with the simple ocean colour scheme. I did a manicure similar to this a while back but using a different set of polishes.

I started off with 2 coats of Essence nude glam "Cookies and Cream". It needed 3 coats but I was covering most of it so I didn't bother. If I was wearing it on its own then I definitely would have gone with a third. I then added on a stripe of white polish, a bigger section of light blue and just the tips gone in dark blue. The light blue is NYC Blue Sky and the darker blue is Barry m Cyan Blue.

I topped it off with Sally Hansen 3D Gel shine topcoat. This helped to even out the layers and give it all and nice gloss.

07 September 2015

You can probably tell by the shorties that this is an older mani! I'm guessing it's from May-June this year so it's not too far back. I went with a Super Mario theme that week but I thought I would show you this half first seeing as I haven't done Luigi nails before.

So as with most of my character nails I started with a white base. The rest of the polishes I used were:

NYC High Line Green

NYC Blue Sky

Max Factor Red Passion

Orly Liquid Vinyl

Essence Love is in the Air

Barry m Starlight (LE Christmas holographic glitter)

Illamasqua Monogamous

I added the Essence the gel nail topcoat to help seal it all in. It lasted really well! I think I had it on for 6 days before I took it off to let my nails breathe a bit. It was hard to do on my shorties but it was well worth the effort. I loved wearing it and I got a fair lot of comments made about them. The photo's were taken after a few days so they aren't as pretty as they were right after painting them but they held up pretty well!

04 September 2015

I bought Essence Electriiiiiic a while back after a lot of deliberation. Swatches online showed it as being incredibly sheer and jelly like. In reality it's more opaque than you'd think. I think the camera makes it look more sheer than it truly is. My nail line is not as apparent in person as you can see in swatches so don't let that put you off.

I have on 2 coats of Electriiiiiic with a basecoat. I could have done a third coat but I didn't think it really needed it. The first coat is slightly streaky but it covers the nail in 2 coats. If you have longer nails and don't like your nail line showing through then a third coat will probably be necessary. I'd also go with a thicker coat to get it nice and opaque.

In person Electriiiiiic is deeper than it shows in swatches. If you see it in person the colour in the bottle is pretty much what you are going to end up with. I'm glad I picked it up. I don't have another polish like it as I've gone through so many bottles of this colour already. I got my bottles in Penny's for €1.89.

03 September 2015

The last polish I was sent from Essence is a pretty teal blue called Miss Captain. This is one of my favourites purely based on the colour. The formula was great on all of them as was application. This is 2 easy coats and it is beautiful. Miss Captain has a slightly dusty look to it but it's not as strong as China Glaze Exotic Encounters, for example.

I'm not sure of any dupes for this one. It's pretty unique to my collection that's for sure. I didn't experience any staining with this one but based on experience with this type of colour I'd say go with a basecoat. There is nothing more annoying than having blue stained nails for weeks after and it detracts from future manicures too. For me this is a total winner! I love the colour, it's so pretty on its own but I can't wait to try it out in some nail art.

Are there any other polishes from the Essence the Gel nail polish line that ye would recommend picking up?

01 September 2015

Twinsie Tuesday is finally back after a month long hiatus. I have to say I missed doing the challenges but it was nice to recharge for a while. We start off with a nice prompt for this week which is Inspired by a Flag. Of course I went with the Ireland flag. A lot of people oddly enough don't know that I am Irish, living in Ireland. I get a lot of emails assuming I'm American (not a notion where that come from!)

I started with Sally Hansen Miracle Gel in 300 Electra-cute. I love this polish, it's a beautiful shade of orange, Once that was dry I freehanded the tips using China Glaze Holly Day. I wasn't sure how to incorporate the white so I just dotted it underneath Holly Day. Pretty pleased with the end result I have to say, It was nice and simple to do too.